Crazy '08; How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History

Smithsonian Books, Collins, 2007. First Smithsonian Books edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xv, [1], 368 pages. Illustrations. Sources. Notes. Index. The author was an assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine. From an on-line posting: In October 1908t he Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team—the first dynasty of the 20th century.

Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has its own three-cornered pennant fight, and players like Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Hal Chase ensured that the other circuit had its moments. But it was the National League's—and the Cubs'—year.

Crazy '08, however, is not just the exciting story of a great season. It is also about the forces that created modern baseball, and the America that produced it. In 1908, politicans ran Chicago's First Ward, and gambling magnates controlled the Yankees. Fans regularly invaded the field to do handstands or argue with the umps; others shot guns from rickety grandstands prone to burning. There were anarchists on the loose and racial killings in the town that made Lincoln. On the flimsiest of pretexts, General Abner Doubleday becomes a symbol of Americanism, and baseball's own anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," was a hit.

1908 was a season in which so many weird and wonderful things happened that it is somehow unsurprising that a hairpiece, a swarm of gnats, a sudden bout of lumbago, and a disaster down in the mines all played a role in its outcome. And sometimes the events were not so wonderful at all. There were several deaths by baseball, and the shadow of corruption crept closer to the heart of baseball—the honesty of the game itself. Simply put, 1908 was the year that baseball grew up. Oh, and it was the last time the Cubs won the World Series. Destined to be as memorable as the season it documents, Crazy '08 sets a new standard for what a book about baseball can be.